> Activists in Utah have spent months condemning Sullivan, who has at turns identified himself as a racial justice protester and leftist documentarian, and they have warned others to be leery of his motives and any events he sponsored.
> He held rallies featuring Black organizers. But attendees said one demonstration also featured members of the Proud Boys, an all-male extremist group with ties to white nationalism. The Proud Boys who attended, organizers said, told the crowd they wished to make peace with Black activists.
> Later in the summer, Sullivan helped organize a pro-gun-rights rally and marched with self-styled militia members at the Utah Capitol, KSL-TV reported, further infuriating Black activists.
> Sullivan’s reputation as an agitator and bad actor has followed him into other protest circles. In encrypted chats among left-leaning activists, organizers routinely flag posts by Sullivan to new members, saying, “Don’t trust that guy” and, pointing to his past ties with the Proud Boys, “He’s a double agent.”
"Our mob can be incited to kill a cop by a single probably-not-really-antifa infiltrator tagging along" is a hell of a way to argue they're not dangerous.
"We fought against white militia. [expletive]. We are going to rip Trump out of office. We are going to rip that [expletive]. "
The left may have abandoned this guy now after his arrest and are busy deflecting all association, but he was most definitely an "anti-trump" activist.
It takes just a couple of people to incite a riot honestly and this guy is an expert who was egging people on while standing safe.
I honestly believe that antifa is not an organized entity.
Antifa exists as a vaguely defined concept around the idea of counterprotesting right-wing groups. Its the same thing as the alt-right, an ill-defined idea that can be whatever bogeyman you want it to be to whoever you want to scare.
This is the problem. You asked if people really don't believe that antifa is real. Obviously it is real in some sense since we are talking about something called antifa, but we have no idea if you are thinking of the bogeyman organization that doesn't exist, and I am thinking of a philosophy of counterprotest.
When people talk about 'getting rid of antifa' there's a reason that so many people on the left laugh. It's because there is a false conception on the right that it is some sort of unified organization like the ACLU or NRA where you can literally be a card carrying member. People on the left understand that there is no such thing, it is just an ill-defined idea.